Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

ananyo writes "In its battle against a sluggish economy, Japan's government is gearing up to make cost savings through a root-and-branch reform of the country's science system, merging some of its most prominent research organizations. Plans approved by the government's cabinet would consolidate the RIKEN network of basic-research laboratories with the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) — the national funding body. But with few details about the timing, potential cost savings or full implications of the change, many researchers are concerned that it could be a recipe for harsh funding cuts and even greater bureaucracy."

It's a tectonic shift that will shake the Japanese science community to their foundations. There will be a tsunami of opposition for a short time, but proponents will weather their storm and melt down their opposition's arguments. At the end there will be a vast wasteland formerly occupied by science deniers bereft of ground to stand on, and a triumphant self-sustaining reaction of proponents to carry the flag of fission to Europe and beyond - even if they have to pass through the core of the Earth or the

Kink may be the answer, then.We were discussing just yesterday, in some/. thread about merging disciplines and cooperative work between scientists/engineers/mathmaticians/artists.At least getting diverse scientists together is a start. Now to get them to reciprocate with each other on common goals is the real test.

which is not so bright. Especially taken into account that this money may be the pension savings for a lot of people. The self-dependence is the thing which prevents them from developing. They have their own market, just for themself, they have their own financial system and their own science system.

No pressing need for serious reforms, is there? And there is not much time left.

I think what people are worried about is there won't be enough young people to take care of the old people. There's two reasons why this is BS. One, the Japanese are a healthy population that takes care of themselves. They're able to work longer. Two, robots & machines are doing most manufacturing tasks these days. It's actually a big problem in the States. We've got no work for the young.

Now, if you're a member of Japan's ruling elite you've got lots of reasons to be worried. You need a strong popu

No, China does not own 70% of Japan's debt, I don't know where you got that number, but it's not even close to being correct. an overview [investopedia.com] of Japan(and other countries') debts as compiled by the CIA. Japan's total debt to gdp ratio is about 200% of it's $5.5 trillion GDP, or roughly $11 trillion dollars. The foreign held debt is about 2.4 trillion, or only about 22% or so, so there is no way China could hold 70% of Japan's debts. Even if it held 70% of the foreign-owned debt, thats only about 16% of the total, a non-trivial amount to be sure, but nowhere near 70%

Just for the record, living in Japan doesn't give you any sort of special insight into this stuff, and if you are going to correct people, please make sure you are even remotely correct before doing so, otherwise it makes you look like an idiot English teacher.

Maybe Japan has a stagnant economy because like the U.S. or Germany, it already is one of the most developed countries in the world. Perhaps the focus should be on building economies that don't require perpetual growth in order to sustain a high quality of life for all citizens. Perpetual growth is impossible. Even with new technologies and innovation, there are only so many resources on this planet.

'economic growth' doesn't mean growth as in a cake growing in the oven.

it simply means an improvement in the standard of living of the population. that is ALWAYS possible, and it uses LESS resources to be made possible.

growth %ages applied to 'GDP' are make-believe bullshit that means absolutely jack except to Keynesian loonies who have been wrong from the moment they stepped out of school with their diplomas. that stupid number made this retarded meme that 'growth is limited' possible. a superficial un

Except that people don't eat and excrete microchips and we have perpetual growth of the population. Perhaps innovative creations can improve the standard of living of a _stable_ and _sustainable_ population.

Japan followed the Keynesian playbook and all they have to show for it is a perpetually stagnant economy with a debt to GDP ratio of over 200%.

Indeed. Japan has had a stagnant economy since the mid 90's, despite huge levels of spending. In the 2000's, business magazines wrote articles about "Japan's Lost Decade". Now it's becoming Japan's lost decades.

I remember when experts were telling us in the 80's that Japan's economic model... high government spending, high subsidies and protectionism for domestic industries, the government picking winners and losers... was the future, and that the US would be left behind if we didn't adopt it.

Japan's inflation rate is -0.2% and its unemployment is 4.5%. They need to create more money to invest in technology and the advance of knowledge, because that is what improves survival fitness by better enabling prediction and adaptation to sudden catastrophic change.

And yet, despite what the economists tell us, they rock us all when it comes to living standards. Least number of homeless people, least amount of murder per capita in the world, healthiest population and the most high-tech gadgets in the world. All over the world you see Japanese tourists spending money like crazy because they think our prices are so low. The economists doesn't know shit because they have it all backwards. Normal people see economy and growth rates as a means to make our lives better and i

However, they have managed this prosperity by going into debt (borrowing from the future). Who knows how long it can keep going.

As I've heard it put, Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. Debt does matter. Money represents some fraction of the wealth in the economy. If a currency loses its credibility as a store of value, well... the the Germans in the 1920s knew how that went.

However... if a country can maintain price stability in the face of massive debt, that could proba

Japan needs to stop with the Keynesian nonsense they've been involved with for the past 2 decades, destroying their currency in this currency war, which is won by those, who hurt their own economy the most.

Trade is not about finding a foreign market for the sake of foreign market. Trade is about comparative advantage and about being able to buy something from people you trade with. NOT their worthless currency, but products that you don't make yourself.

This sound a lot like some of the suggestions posted here for what the US needs to do, so I think he might have not just saved Japan, but saved the whole world! If economists working for world governments knew as much as the libertarians on slashdot, think of what the world would be like!

Trade is about comparative advantage and about being able to buy something from people you trade with.

What, pray tell, is Japan's comparative advantage?

Their "advantage" used to be that they were more efficient than everyone else making the same stuff. With similar labor costs they did it better. Then in the 90s, China and other Third World countries opened up their borders and economies depressing the labor prices - basically. Why be efficient when you can produce something in China for much cheaper than anywhere else? AND even then, the Chinese aren't stupid and are learning from the more developed econom

It's not what "Japan's comparative advantage is", which is obvious - their high tech, their cars, medicine, etc.

It's what other countries can offer as competitive advantage to Japan, which is also obvious - raw materials, energy, probably food.

If Japan can't compete in terms of reduced regulations, because they are not free enough from their government in their culture, then they should at least be competing with their money - rate of return on investments.

Japanese have been listening to the US 'economists' on this, in fact they've taken Bernanke's plan to destroy their currency, which is self-serving for US interests. In reality of-course Japanese are hurting their own people by destroying their purchasing power. If you still don't get it - if companies want to sell more of their stuff in weak currency and thus get less purchasing power for what they sell, they can lower their prices, and the government is absolutely wrong to lower their prices for them by d

See, people like you shouldn't even be allowed to participate in the discussion. You're ignorance is vast.Setting aside the fact the Keynesian economist predicted the economic collapse 3 years before it started, and the includes detials on why and which policies woudl cause it.

They also did it in the 80's economic situation; which was worse then the current one.SO it hard for me to dismiss it when it's shown repeated predictive power.

"who really caused their economy to stagnate for 20 years. "WTF? Japans ec

Japanese economy stagnated awfully, with their productivity prices should have been falling hard and instead they either had stagnating prices or even some rising prices.

Japan's population problem is not worse than of others, Japan needs strong money to buy commodities, which they lack naturally, and if Japanese companies feel they must sell more in nominal terms, they shouldn't be attacking the currency and devaluing it, they should be dropping prices.

You probably are completely ignorant on the fact, that for companies to sell more in devalued dollars is worse than to sell more with reduced prices while money is appreciating - the earnings would buy more and competing would be easier.

Only a profoundly deluded person could think that the vast amount of time separating the predicted crash and the actual crash was a sign that somehow the prediction was accurate. It's actually a sign of the exact opposite.

According to you, your brand of economists predicted economic collapse in 1970 or so, and then the US economy went through a pretty great period for about 40 years over which period real GDP tripled and real per capita GDP more than doubled. Those are based on figures AFTER the recent rece

Keynesians are not economists, and real economists predicted economic collapse DECADES in advance, at the moment when Nixon took US (and thus the world) off the gold standard.

Quite apart from the No True Scotsman parts of that argument, the problem you've got is that economics is full of faddishness and a tendency to say that reality needs to conform to models rather than the other way round. This means you'll always be able to find some economist somewhere that will say something that you can use to "prove" your point, but actually getting a useful prediction out of them is hard to the point of pointless. Which they won't tell you.

Your post makes no sense. First you say they need to stop with Keynesian economics, then you go on about stopping them and their ability to print money. Which is a central keynesian ideal. So which is it?

Oddly Japan seems to be doing fine after learning from their housing bubble in the 90's, which the US didn't learn from. And you believe japanese unemployment is a problem? At 4.3%? Wait, let me guess, you're the same type of person who believes that when it was the same during Bush's term it was disastrous, but during Obama's 10% it was perfectly okay.

That 4.3% is an absolute lie and the Japanese know it is. First off they consider anyone working even an hour a week as "employed", secondly the number masks the massive number of people(mostly middle aged older men who used to work in factories or were middle managers) they hire to do absolutely pointless shit. In a country with one of the lowest crime levels in the world, they have an awfully large number of security guards. And then there are the guys they hire to go around putting "tickets" on bikes, and the guys they hire to hold signs telling people not to use their cell phones while driving, and the guys they hire to man crosswalks with perfectly valid signals(the list can go on for days), not to mention the massive over-construction and not counting a large number of women as being "unemployed" because they "voluntarily" quit work to have kids. The real Japanese unemployment number is easily over 10%, probably closer to 15%. The US number isn't perfect, but it is a much more accurate reflection of the true unemployment rate than the Japanese number is.

The first rule of economics like crime stats that you learn is that rates are calculated differently from country to country. I'd hazard that 4.3% isn't true either, rather it's closer to around 8.5%. Which is still marginally better than the US. The US on the otherhand, is much closer to 16.8%. Canada on the other hand is around 7.8%, though if you figure everything out it's right around 8.3% in total numbers of unemployment.

That you even say the US number is more accurate is laughable. It's off by nea

Your post makes no sense. First you say they need to stop with Keynesian economics, then you go on about stopping them and their ability to print money. Which is a central keynesian ideal. So which is it?

- can you re-read this and try to explain to yourself, how come 2 statements, both of which are true, are contradictory?

Yes, Japan needs to stop Keynesian charlatanism, which means they need to stop government spending and for this they need to stop printing currency. They need market money, not political money, which means in almost every case that they need gold, not paper.

Oddly Japan seems to be doing fine after learning from their housing bubble in the 90's, which the US didn't learn from.

- so you don't know what Japanese zombie banks and zombie corporations are?

They are doing everything to keep their currency down, same as Swiss are involved in, all these currency wars hurt the population of their countries only. Who wins the currency wars? Those who hurt their own people the most.

I wouldn't buy Japanese yen for the same reason I don't want any paper currency, but Japanese yen would be at least 5 times as strong as it is now if it weren't for their insane government policies of the last 20 years and Japan would be much more prosperous than i

Shut up, dumb ass, if you didn't notice the same exact problem has been destroying the economies of USA, Europe, former USSR, Japan, Canada, Australia, South America and Africa and Asia - the entire world is on paper currency, which is insane and an abomination.

Japan needs to rebuild their infrastructure in many places, so they need to allow their currency to appreciate, so that more investments would be put into it, so they could buy more, and they need to stop listening the insane Keynesian charlatans, who really caused their economy to stagnate for 20 years. Nobody should be bailed out and nobody should be protected from rising currency with government intervention. Having currency fall looks good on a quarterly statement due to more sales in devalued currency, but it's terrible for the actual citizens and consumers, who have rising prices because the government destroys the money.

You'll be happy to hear that the Yen has been running record highs for many months. It's probably reduced the costs of their recent jump in fossil fuel use (following the post-Fukushima shutdown of nuclear power), but hasn't been all that good for their unemployment rate.

1. Yen would have been 5 times as high if it weren't for the policies of the last 20 years.

2. What do you mean: "you'll be happy to hear"? What do you think I post these comments without participating in markets? Really?

3. Their unemployment is caused by their government destroying their currency, it's been their policy for 20 years and it will continue for another 20 years and 200 years, whatever it takes them to realise, that they need to let their currency go where the market takes it, and in fact they

I've wondered about societies that value harmony and falling into line and "the nail that stands up will be hammered down" attitudes, etc. What kind of leaders do they get? I'm guessing they get real sociopaths since leadership qualities go against the ruling social paradigms in those cultures.

In the US, we certainly have narcissistic assbags who would sell out the country for a dollar as leaders, but leadership here is considered a good thing, and many parents encourage leadership traits in their kids. So

Of-course the Keynesian charlatans don't understand at all that inflation created by government counterfeiting of currency just lowers the price of things, so price of labour goes down (and the Fed says - that's how we increase employment) so with lower price for labour more people MAY be hired.

In the first round of hearings rast November, the major cuts recommended at facilities such as the SPring-8 synchrotron in Harima and a pranned supercomputer caused a storm of protest among researchers, but the budgets that incorporated the recommendations refrected only modest decreases.

Such recommendations are not regarry binding, but they are submitted to the head of the GRU, Naoto Kan, who is also the government's finance minister. Fairure to compry would probably affect

All R&D agencies and funding consolidated in one government department. They said "No Way!". They like the current system because they can apply for grants to multiple sources with the hope at least one succeeds. A Dept of Science would all your eggs in one basket.

With a single grant source, administrative costs would be greatly reduced at both ends. Current government agencies would hate this too because each one wants to be in control of its own R&D empire.

Centralizing funding mean centralizing controlWith the very large effort to kill science in this country, I would rather it was multiple agencies.

Plus, each field should have it's own group of people that understand the field the grant is being applied for, and that becomes cumbersome.

The grant system has some issues, but I feel most of those could be solved with small entities that package the grant application ot the appropriate people with the purse string. The goal being to minimize the scientists time

I worked for CSIRO(The Australian government run science organization) as a computer monkey and before the recent government meddling they produced a LOT for the size of the org. (we aren’t the US)
The cross communication lead to a lot breakthroughs. Eg A medical researcher was talking to a friend working on hydraulics, noticed the way he has been joining the hydraulic lines and got the idea to do the same thing for major high pressure arteries. It was radical for its time and it worked, took off b

I can honestly say this is not going to work. The working style at NIMS and RIKEN are completely different, and their administration is completely incompatible. This will likely cause headaches all over. Also, one organization does not improve communication between the scientists. I found at RIKEN that the one group was not allowed to talk to the other group at RIKEN in fear one would be copying or taking up time of the other.

I found at RIKEN that the one group was not allowed to talk to the other group at RIKEN in fear one would be copying or taking up time of the other.

As a current RIKEN employee, I can only confirm this. My guess is that the government is slowly trying to wean RIKEN off the big money nipple in a 'death by a thousand cuts' sort of way; seriously downsizing RIKEN risks real political backlash (by Japanese standards, anyway), but nobody other than the affected employees and their friends is going to bat an eyeli

Right... be sure to carefully avoid mentioning stupid huge budget deficits when discussing Japan and its science funding problems. They've only been running giant deficits [tradingeconomics.com] since the '90s, accumulating debt equal to 200% GDP, a ratio worse than any of the European deadbeat PIIGS and twice as bad as the US.
Why? Let's see what the Japanese themselves concluded 10 years ago [cao.go.jp]:

lowered individual income tax... two special tax cuts in FY 1998... permanent cuts in individual and corporate taxes... frequent economic stimulus packages... payments to the social security... disposing of failed financial institutions

Sound familiar?

Japan has become so unproductive it now has a tradedeficit [japantimes.co.jp]. The first since 1981. Why? Just like us they're busy [wikipedia.org] o

This is the kind of reasoning that led Japan to prematurely try to cut budget deficits in the late 1990s, making the economy much worse. If anything, Japan needs to create more money. Money is artificially kept scarce by bankers who claim some sort of divine right to create it and automatically attach debt to it, because otherwise how would they get attention?

Japan could save a a small fortune by stopping the goverment subsidy to slaughter whales in the name of culinary 'science'. Especially since the only place they can find them now is ilegally in protected marine parks off Australia in the Southern Ocean.

I work for one of the 5 bodies under Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS), which in turn is under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). It doesn't look like any of the bodies being consolidated are under NINS, but topically, it seems like they'd fall under MEXT, so I'm curious how they're currently organized.